Saratech Inc Blog: What's the Next Big Thing in CAD? Saratech Inc Blog: What's the Next Big Thing in CAD?

What's the Next Big Thing in CAD?

People love innovative technology. The entire world couldn’t wait to see what was new (or not so new) with the iPhone 5s and 5c and Samsung wisely followed the same strategy. What about CAD? Designers are eager to see what’s next and how these new innovations will improve the way they work. Lately, for the past year, I have been feeling something in the air in the works for CAD. Interestingly enough former SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray posted an article in 2009 called “The Future of CAD” where he stated:

“CAD overhead” will disappear. Anything that stands between a designer’s vision and executing the design is CAD overhead. I’m referring to the details, workflows, special techniques, and master workarounds particular to CAD software but not to engineering per se; i.e., feature order, sketch conflicts, and mating issues. Users can increasingly focus on what they want to accomplish, not on the rules of 3D CAD software. I predict these capabilities will get even better.”

Another interesting development is Belmont Technology, which is a CAD start-up that brought the old SolidWorks band back together. What are they developing? No one knows quite yet and I’m not surprised. History shows that John Hirschtick who was the creator and former CEO at SolidWorks Corp (now a partner at Belmont) has always played his cards close to his chest. 

In an interview by Scott Kirsner, Belmont CEO John McEleney said “We’re building product design software.” Well that’s obvious, but later in the interview he gives more clues. “The process of how people design products has changed.” McEleney notes that most of the major players in CAD software still sell products that run on Windows-based machines, even as engineers and designers regularly use tablets, mobile phones, and the web to modify and access content. He states, "This new generation of engineers expects data to be more shareable, not locked down and 'in the vault.'" And the way products are actually designed, manufactured, and assembled is much more distributed, he adds: "It used to happen under one roof, or on a corporate campus, and now it is spread across facilities around the globe." (It's clear that the cloud will play a major part in Belmont's product strategy, and incidentally McEleney's last startup, acquired by Verizon, was called CloudSwitch.)

So what will the future bring? Seems like one former SolidWorks CEO feels it will it be CAD in the cloud while the other has hinted at direct editing software (both of which are already available). I would venture to speculate that the companies that can adopt this technology and implement it properly will be the ones who thrive in the modern world, but only time will tell.

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